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Salad

Salade a LA Chicago

A salad of boiled carrots, turnips, potatoes, and other vegetables mixed with oil, vinegar, anchovies, mayonnaise, and garnished with beetroot and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 8,001 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut the carrots, turnips, and potatoes into the shape of small olives using a crinkled vegetable scoop.

  2. Cook the vegetables separately in boiling salted water until tender, then cool.

  3. Marinate the cooled vegetables in a mixture of ¾ cup oil and ¼ cup vinegar, seasoned with pepper and salt for 2 hours.

Assemble and serve

  1. Add gherkins, capers, chopped anchovies, and diced chicken to the marinated vegetables.

  2. Rub a serving dish with a shallot.

  3. Mix the vegetables with mayonnaise sauce.

  4. Heap the mixture in a dome shape in the center of the dish.

  5. Decorate with rounds of beetroot and sliced gherkins.

  6. Surround with quartered hard-boiled eggs.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Carrot + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together8,001 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,105 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Potato + chickentop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,756 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Turnip + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together145 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Hold their shape when cooked and absorb the oil and vinegar marinade for body.
Mayonnaise sauce
Binds the salad together and adds creamy richness and moisture.
Oil
Carries flavour through the marinade and keeps the vegetables moist and tender.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the marinade and balances the richness of the mayonnaise.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add soft, rich texture and a mild savoury contrast to the crisp vegetables.
Cooked chicken
Provides the main protein and a tender, savoury bulk to the salad.

The step that matters

Cook the vegetables separately until tender, then cool. Vegetables cooked until just tender hold their shape and absorb the marinade evenly. Overcooked pieces turn mushy and break apart when mixed with mayonnaise, and warm vegetables would thin the dressing.

Flavor stand-ins for the capers

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, potato, vinegar, pepper, chicken, tarragon):

  1. Celerybetter flavor fit
  2. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  3. Dillbetter flavor fit
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, potato, vinegar, pepper, chicken, tarragon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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